


Song for Three

by yhlee (etothey)



Category: The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Multi, Sentimental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 23:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2751314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/yhlee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High school AU: Achilles wouldn't have noticed the new girl if not for Patroclus.</p><p>I was thrilled to see that you liked AUs, because I like writing them.  I hope you enjoy the results!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song for Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [preromantics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/gifts).



If not for Patroclus, Achilles would scarcely have noticed the new girl.

"Achilles."

The cafeteria at their private school was clean and formal, with panels of brightly polished wood, the occasional plaque winking from the walls. Achilles had read and memorized them all--truth be told, he'd known what each one of them said before he ever set foot in the academy's halls. Since he was young his mother had told him that he would attend the academy, had paced around the fountain of their home telling him about every detail, from the soft-throated birds that could sometimes be startled out of the campus grounds--it was a large campus, with many hidden turnings--to the instructors and their histories. Most of the instructors, he had the feeling, were not a little intimidated by his mother.

"Achilles." The voice again, lower, more insistent. Patroclus, who wasn't eating with his usual appetite, or texting him. (Patroclus liked to text Achilles when they were sitting right across from each other: perfectly useless and perfectly funny.) Instead, he was staring across the cafeteria.

Achilles raised his head and followed Patroclus' gaze. There she was, a slim, brown-skinned girl in very plain clothes, the kind his mother would have disdained. His mother's taste was for sea-colors, storm-colors, of a severe cut that exposed the perfection of her skin. She also favored sharkskin boots and purses, which Achilles thought was oddly appropriate.

"Agamemnon's hassling her," Patroclus said, as if Achilles couldn't tell from the way the older boy was crowding the new girl. Agamemnon with his beaky nose and this-will-make-me-look-older beard, the blazer that was already a bit tight across the broad shoulders, the ostentatiously expensive shoes. But of course, without Patroclus to point this out, Achilles wouldn't have taken notice of Agamemnon's latest harassment. Achilles was not, left to his own devices, inclined to get involved.

Still, he knew what Patroclus wanted. Patroclus noticed things like this. It was one of the things Achilles liked about him, that arrowing kindness. "All right," he said, and was rewarded by the faint flush of relief on his friend's cheeks, as though there had ever been any doubt.

Achilles rose and strode straight for Agamemnon and his brother where they held court, a favored table beneath the glowering bust of some old war hero, heavy-browed and scratched up from some past prank. Someone had scribbled an obscene couplet with a ballpoint pen across its base. No matter how many times the janitors scrubbed it off, it kept reappearing, in the same handwriting. Symptomatic, really.

The girl did not look enthusiastic at Achilles' approach. "You too?" she asked.

"She's from the _other_ school," Agamemnon drawled. "Transferred in just this morning. Thought we'd show her around, get her settled in." Still, for all the studied arrogance of his voice, he eyed Achilles warily.

Achilles looked at the girl evenly. "Do you want to be settled in?"

Her chin came up. "I'm here now, aren't I?"

The _other_ school. The rival school, which was down the street and around the corner, built upon the rise of a hill, with gates of weathered bronze. Achilles walked by it every morning on the way to school, with Patroclus arm-in-arm beside him. His mother spoke of it often, in terms of drifting contempt. Achilles tried not to take this too seriously. His mother spoke of many things with varying degrees of contempt. He knew her marriage was not a happy one, although he would never bring it up with her, and if the cloud-filter of anger gave her any degree of solace, then he would not take it from her.

The girl was looking at him with less fear now, and more curiosity. It occurred to him that she knew nothing of who he was. Something in the steady set of her mouth reminded him of Patroclus. Here, as much as he disliked Agamemnon and his hangers-on, everyone was _familiar_. Everyone knew each other by sight, and even new students tended to have heard of Achilles, Agamemnon, Agamemnon's brother Menelaus, the whole long list--all of them were known by the reputations of their families. The world was a small place, after all. But this girl had gone to the rival school and either did not know what Achilles looked like, or had not made the connection.

He offered his hand. "I'm Achilles," he said. "What's your name?"

She had a good grip, and shook firmly but not lingeringly. The flicker of her eyes told him that she knew that the intervention hadn't been his idea. She had glanced toward Patroclus. "Briseis."

It was a pretty name, but she was undoubtedly used to hearing words like _pretty_ and _sweetheart_ and _come closer, sit in my lap_ all in the same sentence. (He was censoring inside, a bit.) Besides the insult it would have offered her, Achilles wasn't interested in her like that anyway. He did, however, smile at her, because Agamemnon needed a way to save face or things would get ugly later.

( _It's common sense,_ Patroclus would say during situations like this.)

( _Tactics,_ Achilles would retort. _Haven't you read Vegetius or Sun Tzu?_ )

"Come have lunch with me and Patroclus?" Achilles said. Then he turned his smile on Agamemnon. "Let me have a chance for once, it's not like I have any luck with girls the way you do." Let Agamemnon read flattery into his words.

Agamemnon, despite his temper, wasn't entirely stupid. He knew what Achilles was pulling. But he knew, too, that there were other girls, more easily impressed. (Or more easily bullied, take your pick.) "Fine," he said, feigning loss of interest.

Briseis clutched her bento box to her and followed Achilles to where Patroclus sat, pushing the hacked-apart remnants of a pork chop on his plate. In fact, it looked as though the pork chop hadn't been eaten at all, although the green beans were missing in action.

"You must be Patroclus," Briseis said, setting down her bento box. It was black with an absurd Hello Kitty on the corner. Briseis struck Achilles as the least Hello Kitty girl he had ever met, although he had to concede that any close experience with girls was limited to the times his mother had tried to introduce him to the daughters of her friends, and niceties like tea and dancing and earnest discussions of Minecraft, stock portfolios, and crewel techniques. Too bad he couldn't have sent Patroclus in his stead; Patroclus did cross-stitch, claiming that if he wanted to be a surgeon someday he might as well get used to needles in whatever medium. "I'm Briseis."

Patroclus' face lit at Briseis' low, clear voice. "Hello, Briseis." They shook hands gravely.

In all his life Achilles had never felt jealousy before. It stirred in him then, watching them watching each other. The two of them discussed their histories elliptically, apparently finding a kinship in the fact that they were both scholarship students. Patroclus dressed so as to disguise the fact, even if everyone knew, and even if his association with Achilles meant no one bothered him about it too much. From time to time someone suggested school uniforms, but it always got voted down. Briseis either hadn't been able to find clothes less obviously shabby, or refused to be pressured. He never did ask her, but he could guess.

Then Patroclus took up his fork and snatched a French fry off Achilles' tray with it, his eyes crinkled with mischief, and Achilles relaxed.

* * *

They spent most of their time together after that, the three of them. Achilles took his leave of them for several classes out of the day, including Orchestra. Once he had played his violin for Patroclus regularly. The two of them had both taken lessons, Achilles from an earlier age, but Patroclus had never shown much talent for the instrument. ( _It will look good on your transcript,_ Achilles' mother had said once, in response to the question he hadn't asked, when the violin's ribbon-song timbre was reason enough. She did not, herself, take much pleasure in music, despite attending concerts wearing gloves of silk that went up to her elbows.) Achilles did not play for Briseis specifically, although she came with Patroclus to some of the after-school practices, sitting quiet and serious in the auditorium with her head tilted bird-fashion. He wanted to have something between himself and Patroclus alone. But the orchestra's music was not something he could confine to a single listener, nor did he wish to. Up on the stage he lost himself in the dazzle-cascade of notes and never turned the pages upon the stand (his stand partner, who didn't have the music memorized, did that), although he marked the up-bows and down-bows and preferred fingerings dutifully according to the teacher's instructions. He was third chair in the first violins, not first (small miracle, his mother didn't lecture him about _that_ , and he regarded her fondly for it).

Patroclus studied hard for AP Biology, which he and Briseis had together. They would quiz each other on chemical reactions, the parts of cells, doodle Punnett squares in each other's notebooks. (Briseis used the cheapest possible ballpoints. Patroclus liked mechanical pencils, 0.7 mm lead.) Achilles could, at least, follow the Punnett squares. In the meanwhile he wrote perfect five-point essays, with verbs honed sharp, alliterative hammerfalls of words to make arguments about Plato, Plath, platitudes he had never cared about. At other times he went to the track and ran, fast and faster, the sun alternately behind his back and before him as he circled the forever gyre, falcon-sure. He made sure to time his runs so that they wouldn't interfere with practices. People came to watch, anyway. But he was used to that.

Sometimes they came to school early, passing beneath the sun-limned silhouette of the rival school, and walked the perimeter of their campus. It was mazed with roses, blossoms opening wider and wider as they turned brown and wrinkled. Fountains spilled coins of water into the air. Great speckled koi swam in a pond, gazing up with wise eyes. Briseis liked to feed them.

"Come away with me," Achilles said to Patroclus one afternoon when Briseis was in the library doing research for a project. He could imagine her studious and good-humored, weaving between the shelves with her slim fingers picking over the books' tattered spines until she found what she wanted. More likely she was using the library's computers; she had mentioned once that she didn't have internet at home. With aching suddenness he remembered the way she had looked over his shoulder at Patroclus the first day they met.

Patroclus considered him sideways. "Why, have you found something to show me?"

It was the old teasing game, and the heat in his heart grew wilder remembering it. Words were not enough. He resorted instead to the eloquence of touch, hand hovering just above Patroclus'.

"I have to write up this lab report by Thursday," Patroclus said, with unaffected dismay, but he shouldered his backpack and came with Achilles.

The air was crisp and autumn-sweet. It put Achilles in mind of apples new-fallen. He led Patroclus to the shadow of two trees where the groundskeepers had not yet swept the leaves, dappled green and splashed with yellow, orange, brown. His footsteps were silent, a trick he had learned early on. Patroclus, less so, although he could be reasonably quiet when he put his mind to it.

Patroclus knelt and picked up an acorn from where it had fallen next to a determinedly cheerful dandelion. "For you," he said with a flourish. The cardigan he was wearing snagged against his shoulders. The hollow of his throat sent a flush through Achilles.

"For you," Achilles breathed, and leaned forward, watching for any hint of a flinch, to press his lips to Patroclus'. He plucked the acorn from Patroclus' hand and slipped it into his pocket as a souvenir, with the practiced movements of a magician. Drew back, watching some more.

Patroclus made a sound between a yelp and a moan. His hand came up and tangled in Achilles' hair. For a moment he did not seem able to say anything.

"Then don't," Achilles said in response to the wordless question.

Patroclus smiled then. He seemed both solid and unsolid at the same time, as though he might dissolve into the tree behind him, be swallowed up by the wrack of leaves and the wreck of broken branches. Achilles pressed him against the oak, kissing line and curve and angle: ear down to jaw, across to the bridge of his nose, down to the tender skin above his collarbone.

 _So this is what it is, being drunk,_ Achilles thought through the alternating knife-and-haze of desire. It was nothing like the apéritifs that his mother had presented to him since he turned twelve, never very much at a time, and never particularly appealing, for that matter. It had even less to do with his classmates' experimentations. What came to mind was the dandelion below them, its brightness hinting maddeningly at the honey-intoxication of a fragrance he was too far away to smell.

His feet moved, and for once were not silent; the leaves crunched beneath them as he shifted his weight. Patroclus moaned. His hips tilted, met Achilles'. Heat and friction and pleased startlement.

"Oh," said a voice behind them.

Achilles twisted without letting up. "Briseis," he said. Not wary, not yet.

"I know the rose-paths and the places where the grass is tramped down," Briseis said wryly. "Didn't you think I would be able to find you?" The pulse fluttered in her neck, visible above the sensible blouse with its pressed collar. "I didn't mean--I'll go."

Patroclus whispered a word that might have been _Stay_. Surprised, Achilles turned to look him full in the face, and was drunk all over again on what he saw in Patroclus' eyes, the wine of mutual desire. When Patroclus spoke again, his voice was louder. "I dream of you, too. The two of you. I--" Patroclus' face reddened, and he stopped speaking.

Achilles had never been one to linger over decisions. He glided to the left and canted his head, smiling, before stroking a lock of Patroclus' hair away from his brow. "Briseis," he said, tasting her name, because she would not join them unless invited. He knew that much of her.

She slipped through the leaves and raised a hand, tentative. Achilles caught her wrist, very gently, and guided her hand to Patroclus' chest. "Briseis," he said again. Together they felt the sea-thunder of Patroclus' heart beating.


End file.
